A GrowthBuster’s Work is Never Done
Today we announced to the world a crowdfunding campaign for our new TV series (in development), Conversation Earth. If you support our GrowthBusters work, you’ll want to help us meet and exceed the modest $15,000 goal.
Why a TV series? An opinion piece in Saturday’s New York Times purported humans are above nature. It claimed our technology can overcome any limitations we might create by paving over habitat, overfishing, damming rivers, pumping aquifers dry and overloading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. (read my full critique at www.growthbiasbusted.org)
It’s astonishing we have scientists (granted, it’s a minority of them) writing this kind of nonsense, and disappointing a prestigious, widely read newspaper publishes it. This reminds us we still have very important work to do, replacing the growth mythology that’s paralyzing society as we steer our civilization straight toward the cliff.
Our new Conversation Earth TV series is the newest salvo in this battle. This idea sprang from our discovery we are sitting on a gold mine of conversations with some of the brightest minds of our time. For the GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth documentary I interviewed great thinkers like Dennis Meadows (co-author of The Limits to Growth), Paul Ehrlich (author of The Population Bomb), Bill Rees (co-originator of ecological footprint analysis) and Herman Daly (former World Bank senior economist and ecological economics pioneer). We have dozens and dozens like these!
Of course, this list also includes the late Al Bartlett, the physics professor who famously lectured around the world about exponential growth and sustainability. Sadly, I could only include a minute or two of each interview in the documentary. Many interviewees did not even make it into the film. Yet I have a good hour of compelling conversation with each, sitting on a hard drive here at GrowthBusters World Headquarters.
With a title like GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, there are likely some people who will never watch my documentary (people like Charles and David Koch and Rupert Murdoch?). And there are networks that may never air it (Fox, PBS, even?) Our new Conversation Earth television series has the potential to reach a far greater audience. What’s really interesting and will give this series wide appeal is it will have the freedom to delve much more deeply into subjects like fulfillment, happiness, crowd behavior, technology, simplicity, etc.
I need your help to get this series produced and on the air. Please visit our campaign at Indiegogo, pitch in, and use the sharing tools there to recommend your friends support the project. Thank you!
Dave Gardner
GrowthBuster and Filmmaker
Dave Gardner directed the documentary GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth. He writes, speaks and produces film and video about the unsustainability of our worship of growth everlasting.
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